


Lemancholy

by mattador



Category: Literary RPF
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattador/pseuds/mattador
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>More went on at Villa Diodati than met the eye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lemancholy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartequals (savvygambols)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvygambols/gifts).



_27 May_ **  
**Polidori is given to the strangest fancies. Today he has missed an evening of the most amiable and engaging company all due to some errant whimsy -- he supposes he saw a ghost, or perhaps a mer-maid, and was given to much nonsense about ill omens as a result. If my imagination were so lively, I suppose I should be greatly pleased to encounter a ghost, but in any case it is nothing but a vapor in his brain. **  
  
**We were sailing Leman, lazily enough, and for once the weather was congenial, when I saw upon the shore what might be called a dread apparition, if one were given to casual cruelties -- Miss Clairmont, who until a few days ago I thought safely behind in England, with the conclusions of all my other wretched affaires.  You must not think that I am poorly disposed towards the girl, of course, which would contradict my own sentiments of but a few months past, but she is alarmingly persistent.  Eight hundred miles is a notable distance for any hunt, but she not only made the journey -- she outpaced me, so that when I arrived in Geneva I found her letters already waiting me, with dinner invitations, tiresome quips, and one promise, perhaps, with more allure than the others.  She travels in the company of Mary Godwin -- whose affection she assures me of, and whose more decently cool remove is not without its charms -- and with Shelley -- the author of _Queen Mab_ , an altogether clever little work -- with whom CC offered to introduce me. **  
  
**Of course, that I might delay my reply a day’s time would not do, because Godwin and Clairmont were walking upon the strand, as I said -- one somber and one gay -- with a pale man between them who could only be the famous Shelley. **  
  
**As I turned to go into shore, Polidori leaned across the boat and gripped my knee, his face full of urgency, but his warning at first no more articulate than a single “Don’t.” **  
  
** **“** Don’t?” I asked him, lightly enough given his history of presumption.  This is the boy who, upset at my opinion of his poetry, once asked -- while engaged in my employ less than two weeks time -- what _else_ besides poetry I might think myself more accomplished at than he.   Three things, I said.  Firstly, I could shoot a pistol through the keyhole of a door.  Second, I could swim across the Rhine.  Thirdly, I could give him a d---ed good thrashing.  But he will not be warned. **  
  
** **“** When you read the letter, you wanted none of her,” he said, licking nervously at his lip.  Artifice did not come as naturally to Polidori as vanity, and this was plainly an excuse.  “Easiest to end this now.  A simple cut.” **  
  
** **“** Hardly simple,” I told him.  “Nor manly, beside.  I won’t be thought a coward, Doctor.  And even were my courtesy so far gone, Godwin seemed agreeable -- and charmingly unimpressed, as well -- and I have a mind to speak to Shelley.  Come along.” **  
  
** **“** And the other lady?” he asked, hotly, gesturing -- a madman’s pretense, for there was no other lady.  As he stabbed his finger, though, I saw what he meant -- the ladies, in their dark dresses, framing Shelley in a white shirt, gave a reflection in the cloud-silvered water, and it was very like a head of wild dark hair framing a narrow, pallid face, the gaps between where their arms linked like watery blue-grey eyes.  The image was uncanny, and striking, but it was an eidolon and nothing more. **  
  
** **“** She is a fit subject for verse,” I told him.  “Not cowardice.”  Still he would not come, and so I rowed myself -- while he sulked -- and told him before I vacated the boat that he should come and say hello, if he were fit for it.  Instead, as I stepped into the shoals, he flung himself down, lying between the planks and staring at the sky, so the boat drifted off beside me. He is much given to such dramatic gestures and exaggerated habits. **  
  
**Since we had not brought the boat to ground, I quite ruined my shoes, but I would not ruin my temper.  Shelley had the dream-plagued gaze of a prophet, and I knew, as Clairmont gave her effervescent greetings and introduction, that we should entertain one another well. **  
  
**Certainly, he would not find it hard to eclipse the Doctor’s company in my preferences. ****  
  
 _4th June_

 We are on the water almost every day.  Clara and the Maie do not find it as great a joy as I do, but they come nonetheless, often enough, and Byron and Polidori are with me near constantly. Indeed, Polidori stays closer to Byron than even Clara can, and is more jealous.  He nearly overturned our sailboat today, though it is by far the worthiest craft on... on these waters.  Byron had taken to singing at the mountains, fancying he could hear the echo, and as he leaned over the gunwale to better listen, Polidori struck him with an oar, sending Byron one direction and his cane another -- into the lake, where it sank without pause.  I wondered that a cane should sink so easily, but Byron said later that it was a swordstick.  I daresay it is just as well, for I have never seen him so livid as when he fell.  All the calumnies of the English gossips might have been true, seeing his face then, and if he had a sword he might have run the Doctor through.  Thankfully he did not. **  
  
**The fury, the sinking stick, the echo: they all worried me.  I’ve spoken to the Maie about it, and she has of course been good enough to reassure her Elphin Knight that of course such a thing is impossible.  All that is behind us, in the Channel or across it. **  
  
**I would not have them carried over, here and now, for anything in the world.  Not even surcease.  Byron’s mind is luminary, though it still clings to the cruder shackles of society in the name of tradition, part of his inheritance he has not learned to disregard.  We have much to teach each other, but thankfully, we have also the time and peace to do it in. **  
  
**The rain has begun again now as I write this.  It has been cold and raining since we arrived.  When the crossing was clear, I knew this would be a risk.   Water has never favored me, as much as it may call to me. **  
  
** _15 June_ **  
**As much as Percy and I have been enjoying Lord Byron’s company, at times he can be thoughtless and intolerable.  He does not consider the effect he has on others, although he is aware of it. **  
  
**Today, as I was walking up to Diodati (Percy was on the lake), I had some difficulty in the mud, for the rain has been pretty near constant since our arrival here. Byron and Polidori had been conversing on the balcony above, wondering how many there were at present at the hotel across the lake who were watching us through glasses.  Lord Byron was very cavalier about the subject, but I have reason to think that it bothered him; and certainly Doctor Polidori was not much enamored of the notion of these unseen eyes watching us, for he declared that he could feel them. **  
  
**Byron, remarking on my progress below, gave an aside to Polidori, that he ought to go down and lend me his hand.  What transpired was not at all his meaning, I am sure, but it was his fault nonetheless.  I looked up, meaning I think to protest that as a most unnecessary step, and saw L. B. with what I can only describe as a resigned, friendly grimace.  He knows of course how frustrating it is to have difficulty on a simple walk. **  
  
**Polidori’s gaze, however, lit upon mine rather differently, like a flame that has just reached the wick of a candle, and with a simple assent, ‘Yes, I should’ he stood forth upon the balcony railing and jumped down.  I say jumped, but it was really more casual than that, a step forward with a little more spring in it than usual, and then he was careening down like a comet, his eyes still blazing with a heat I could not help but look away from.  Perhaps instead I should have blushed. **  
  
**Like any rogue star, his descent was ungentle.  His foot came down amidst the stones of the little wall I was walking next to, and I saw it turn, so that he stumbled and nearly fell down into my arms, a reversal which I cannot help believe might have pleased some but which would have hurt the gallant doctor’s spirit very greatly.  He confessed, after a moment, that he was not sure he could walk like this, and with tears in his eyes we took one another’s hands and waited, Byron and the servants being obliged now to come down and help the both of us with our assent. **  
  
**It is, I maintain, that hypnotic effect of Byron’s suggestions which caused the Doctor to act so intemperately, and I do not blame him, for even I am not wholly immune to it, though Percy teases that I am.  If that were so, I would interject my speech more often into their conversations, for as Percy well knows it is not my habit to be _that_ silent and retiring, although quietude serves me very well in general. **  
  
**While not inclined to apologise, Byron was still very  solicitous, irritably brushing aside his valet and seeing to Polidori’s comfort himself, which caused the good doctor to exclaim.  “I did not believe you had so much feeling!” he said, and there too it was plain in his eyes. **  
  
**Oh, John.  It seems we are brother and sister, stricken by kindred afflictions, although as mine was contracted first, I believe I will call myself the elder of us. **  
  
** _16 June_ **  
**We watched the forking lightning illuminate the waters of the lake, and from his perch on the divan Polidori gave forth the most clinical and chilling account of the powers of galvanic forces upon tissue.  It fit most nicely with the stories we have been telling, but the effect was most pronounced upon Mary.  The girl smiled, a grim little smile, and I knew what it meant, for surely, have not I -- many a time, glancing out over some sight bleak or picturesque -- smiled grimly to myself and committed that knowledge of the perversities of nature to the mental vault from which I draw forth verse? **  
  
** **“** We should,” I suggested, “each write ghost-stories of our own.  Every mind carries its own fair share of horrors.” **  
  
**Clairmont beamed at me, as inappropriate the room and the mood therein as a beam of sunlight would have been, and the men seemed pensive -- but Mary was startled, and lost her smile.  “I look forward to reading them,” she said, softly, as if it was only the men I had meant -- as if she could think I would invite Polidori and the fatuousness of his prose to cohabitate in a space I denied her luminary wit! **  
  
** **“** As I look forward to reading yours,” I told her.  “Come.  You and I will publish ours together.”  She could not mistake my meaning then, and an altogether kinder smile returned, her eyes not on mine but already thinking, already unlocking the problem, which was exactly right.  The others gave their assent, and Shelley immediately sat himself before the window, scribbling by guttering candle as he watched the trees give way before the wind, and the cloud, blacker than the sky between the stars, throw its light at us.  His understanding of matters such as this is unparalleled, among the few who I believe could match my own, but in this case I was frustrated with him as well, for however marvelous his tale, he neglected to nourish the dearer genius near to him. **  
  
** **“** But what would I write it about?” she murmured, to herself more than to me, and I decided to have no patience with it.  Modesty should not contain brilliance as a gaoler. **  
  
** **“** Perhaps what we discussed,” I said, as gracelessly as if I had borrowed Polidori’s tongue.  “I saw the spark strike.  Perhaps a corpse could be re-animated.  Galvanism has given token of such things: the disparate parts of a creature might, though scattered, be imbued with vital warmth.  It is not unimaginable that they should happen thus, separately -- lightning, empyrean fire, can carry motive and inspiration to a numb mind; have we not just seen such a wonder?” **  
  
** **“** Wonder would not be my word for it,” she said. **  
  
** _18 June_ **  
**It is strange how one moment something can give you an occasion for joy, a frisson of delicious excitement, and turn the next to a cause for fear and alarm.  If we are still speaking of ghost stories it may be, I think, fitting, but even so I loathe it with all my heart. **  
  
**Even as I write this page, I intend to burn it, as Percy would have me do, but instead maybe I will be coy, which is a habit I often despise, but in this case it may help me to preserve a memory without revealing a secret, and so I hope it will be forgivable.  No-one else is meant to read this journal, in any case. **  
  
**Summer should never be as cold as this, but the evenings are warm.  Percy and Byron guarantee us that, for the discussions they have shed heat, from friction or passion, leaving the dear doctor and I to tend the fire, making certain it does not overspill its bounds, banking it, feeding it... it amuses me to think of it so.  Claire, of course, basks, and I must suppose justly, as she was the one who kindled it. **  
  
**Watching the two of them speak lines at one another is pure pleasure, superior to anything in the theater, for each has the author’s flair, weaving the narrative together.  They lean forward in the shadows less like a reader over a book and more like a dragon over its hoard, and they draw us rapt listeners into conspiracy with them.  Percy had convinced our Albé (as he and Claire have taken to calling L.B., for his paleness, and his verse) to read from Coleridge, and it was in the midst of _Christabel_ that he came across a passage Percy and I had passed over before, unremarking. **  
  
**As Lord Byron came to the fatal line, Percy looked at me, and I saw horrible knowledge in his eyes, before he flung his face sideways, averting his gaze to prevent that fatal transmission, and ran aghast from the room.  I dared not follow, but John saw something, at least, of what had transpired (he sees more than any but I, I think, credit him with) and followed, fetching him back before long. **  
  
** _Then drawing in her breath aloud,_ **  
** _Like one that shuddered, she unbound_ **  
** _The cincture from beneath her breast:_ **  
** _Her silken robe, and inner vest,_ **  
** _Dropt to her feet, and full in view,_ **  
** _Behold! Her bosom and half her side_ **  
** _Are lean and old and foul of hue._ **  
  
**Percy communicated between gasps the vision that had transfixed him, of a tale he had heard about a woman whose breasts sported eyes instead of nipples.  Claire and Albé were properly respectful -- something of a miracle for Albé, of course, but Polidori was dissatisfied. **  
  
**I know that the vision was not all of it.  Percy would not lie about what he saw, for he is passionate about the truth, but the terror of the moment that proceeded from Byron’s lips was not in the words alone.  It was the way which he said it -- the fascination, and the appeal. **  
  
**I think of Chartier’s ballad, that Chaucer translated, and shudder. **  
  
**We must not let it have Albé as well. **  
  
** _26 June_ **  
**A number of episodes have occurred which I find very strange to relate.  I think perhaps a sort of miasma hovers over this lake -- a lemancholy, appropriately enough, and I perhaps the only one not afflicted by that lovesick fancy they say is so dear to the poetical mind. **  
  
**Well.  Affected, at least, less than my compatriots.  The Clairmont girl has her complaints of me, and I daresay Shelley has his own of her, if I read the situation aright.  My precocious young doctor makes eyes at Mary Godwin as if he is a swooning schoolboy, and were I more kindly inclined toward his vanities I would take it upon myself to educate him in the art of pursuit, for plainly neither she nor her --I cannot in a confident moment call him her husband when he is married elsewhere, however they live -- would object. I, of course, am used to being looked to, and it has long since ceased to turn my head.  Refraining from sport for the sake of those absent me by time, distance, and the cruel demands of a thoughtless society has proven a test, and not one I can entirely pass.  There is a fascination -- but I was speaking of other fascinations, of fancies brought on by the gloom of the weeping clouds above the lake, in a sense more maniacal than amiable. **  
  
**Shelley and I made arrangements to put a girdle round the lake -- though Shelley objects to my phrasing it thus, given to some strange prejudice on the matter -- and it had been assumed that our Doctor, who had more of Shelley’s favor than the reverse -- jealous boy -- would accompany us, before his moment of inelegant gallantry made it impossible to consider travel.  Still, he shall have a congenial nurse, and I would not have thought it a very great suffering -- and a relief to myself, I won’t scruple to deny it.  He vexes me, and his compensations are not so great as the Clairmont girl’s.  The first curious incident to which I refer was perhaps the most inexplicable and disturbing, given that -- while packing the medications I trust myself to administer in his absence, I found him writing, not his usual drivel but a Socratic tract of _Apologia_ in the most original sense.  He was, on that same desk, laying out preparations to destroy himself. **  
  
**I seldom admit of any gesture which can exceed my own in passion, in sentiment of expression, but here he overwhelmed me.  We sat and spoke for hours, and although much of what he said to me was sheerest nonsense and superstition -- unworthy of a medical man, to be sure -- I gave no token of that, but listened, and heard much of his mind that I had not guessed.  It was dark by the time that we concluded our conversation, but new light was in his eyes, and his course had been dissuaded by careful consolation.  I do not object in the least to being thought of as cruel, nor hesitate in mine own occasional cruelties when I feel they are merited either by another’s vice or my own. I have wished ill on Polidori often enough, or to be quit of him, and no less sincerely for this night.  But he is not without the capacity to arouse my sympathies, and something of the grandiose in him is a mawkish echo of myself.  I would not have him end his life, and I would not have any man do so over frivolous nonsense, imagined threats, vague misgivings, and such fears as may quake any man’s heart in a dark, cold moment, and be dispelled by the simplicity of light or kindness. **  
  
**That was the first.  The rest, perhaps, proceeded from it, from an awakened sensitivity in myself to the little miracles of the surrounding world, a vigilance directed toward any sign of Polidori’s paranoid fantasies, but capable of catching much else besides in its net. **  
  
**The second was beauty -- _I_ do not know how to express it better than that at first glimpse, which should give you some notion of how ephemeral it was.  Under my gaze, whatever I saw would accrue worth -- or perhaps my gaze would simply penetrate deeper, an _apocalypse_ in the original sense, and as the veils of the world would peel themselves away the beauty would be revealed to me.  Each sight held its own lustre, its own sensation, and I could see that Shelley was cognizant of it as well as we continued our expedition. **  
  
**Our first night on the lake, after we had both been arrested by the sight of a child -- a youth who seemed to glow with golden wholesomeness, or perhaps holiness, if one can believe in such a quality -- we returned to the mean little rooms we had rented, and even those were transformed.  By lamplight we conversed, and the dancing flame above the oil was not more or less rapturous than Shelley’s words, carving beauty from the dross of the world like the sculptors in Greece would chisel it from rock. **  
  
**That is why I say, I think, that we imbued the beauty ourselves, that we brought it with us -- because to choose to believe in the sublime in this vale of tears is an act of will and of character. **  
  
**I had not had such conversation, nor slept in such a bed, since my journey to Greece, and I had not been as grateful for life since the emergence of this year’s violent themes became clear to me.  As Shelley persisted in calling me Albé -- a welcome flattery, almost a master’s nickname for his page, or a brother’s for his brother -- before the evening was through I had christened him Shiloh -- apropos enough, and tender, but also a barb at his brash atheism, though I cannot see that he credited it. **  
  
**That night, at least, was strange, but also welcome.  What followed was less so. **  
  
**The lake has been given this month to lashing petulantly at the shore with its waves, then lying calm like a darkened mirror under the grey sky, and its moods and tempers have been a great entertainment to me.  Once before, on Shelley’s boat, we championed the waters -- Shelley seemed to relish the turmoil, and the ladies maintained high spirits throughout, laughing as I howled back at the wind -- only Polidori was the least distraught, but he too has a portion of my gift for glorying in dark moods, so it was a tolerable outing for us all, celebrating Man’s defiance of magnificent, uncaring forces and singing into the face of danger. **  
  
**It was one of those moments -- as the night I have just spoken of -- where I felt most keenly my kinship with my new friends, and Shiloh most especially, pagan oracle though he might be.  I had never seen his strength or his courage higher. **  
  
**It was not the storm that was strange to me, then, our next day touring the lake -- it was Shelley.  When we set out, the weathers were calm, as placid as any day we had plied them -- the sky had abandoned its lachrymose attitudes -- it was, in short, as pretty as an etching.  The first peculiarity, I might say -- again, not the waters of Leman itself, but how my lemancholy friend took to the quiet. **  
  
**It disturbed Shelley very greatly.  He plucked a leaf from the book -- where, at present, his verse was failing him -- and turned it absently between his hands, a series of familiar changes which eventually produced a cunning paper boat between his hands.  Thoughtlessly he cast it onto the waters -- it drifted in the boat's wake, bobbing and nodding on the waves, the lines of ink slowly blooming into smoky flowers upon its surface.  I had seen him make half a hundred such little ships in listless moments, a positive paper admiral dispatching his navies to Poseidon’s caprice.  An endearing habit. **  
  
**I was watching the boat when the first wave tumbled it onto its side, wicking across the folds-- its hull closed like a mouth when the water next lapped at it.  The storm that followed was as abrupt, and the careless sailors foundering already, anticipating the fate of our ship.  I endeavored to aid by example -- close as we were to shore, unless the waves let us fall among the stones, it was an easy swim. **  
  
**Shiloh could not swim, but he would not shrink from the danger.  I turned to him, to explain the situation -- that we were as safe as by the hearthside, and I could support him immediately -- and his repulsion was palpable.  He despised, he said, that I or anyone would adventure their safety for his own, and he went to the bottom of the ship, sitting upon the locker and wrapping his arms about the lines.  It was foolish, and futile, and beautiful.  It was of no use to me to protest that he did not understand what he was speaking of, for his resolve -- his pathos -- was hewn in the lines of his face, a noble, morbid dignity.  It was my understanding that failed, and fails -- he did not fear the water, I would swear to that.  His motive was courageous, and his purpose, to preserve me, it would be churlish to resent.  But he had seen me swim.  He did not doubt that I could bear him to shore -- I will swear to that. **  
  
**His fear and his object were both obscure to me, and even after we were delivered -- irrelevantly, with no drama nor heroism but that of persistence -- he still would not speak of them, despite any inducement, even when we were couched again for the evening.  Nor would I relent -- two symplegadean hearts in conflict, I had but one recourse left, that to echo his gesture -- to wrap my forearms in the bedclothes and proclaim that I would not be moved. **  
  
**It was not unmoving, and not unprofitable, but my understanding still flags. **  
  
** _4 August_ **  
**Despite our absence for half of July, and many papers disposed of, many attempts consigned to oblivion, the signs have continued to proliferate. **  
  
**It is a shame these matters are not better understood and inquired after by men of science, so that we are left, like witch doctors of old, to guess at the treatment, prescribing rote phrases and gestures of appeasement, making sacrifices, relying on symbols of peace and wellness in token and hope that they may bring about the reality. **  
  
**Percy refuses to refer to any of it as magic, and I am firmly with him.  It is a system of communication. Imbuing properties to nature by directing them in the correct fashion, no different than how Polidori will diagnose, describe, and apply proper chemical relief to a physical imbalance.  It is only because we are dealing in forces indirect and invisible that our own efforts are constrained to be similarly arcane if observed from without. **  
  
**We went out on the lake together in Percy’s boat, just past dawn on his birth-day, which I sometimes think is only a little less fragile than paper, and a little more durable than my elphin knight’s heart.  We lit, together, a fire balloon, just as fragile, and let it sail above the lake.  It stands counterpart to all the boats he has sacrificed, just as transitory, but a reversal. An Albanian song. **  
  
**Now, suspended on our hope in a medium of doubt, we wait. **  
  
** _6 August_ **  
**Today I am miserable, and my principles lend no comfort. Polidori has challenged me to a duel.  It is a wretched business.  We have made out to Byron that it is over the matter of a sailing contest, for he came upon us suddenly in the midst of heated discussion and would have its causes known.  That he championed me to Polidori therefore provides no comfort, though it left the man to withdraw his challenge.  I could not admit to him of a failure when he has forsworn the least belief in the matter, which is still baffling given his theistic credulity. **  
  
**Byron, like Polidori, speaks of thefts, of a woman seen lurking about the villa, of the felt ephemeral presence of eyes upon them at all times.  Tourists at Secheron have taken to purchasing glasses through which to view our imagined scandals, but our troubles here are opaque to them.  It is not their eyes that Albé and his Doctor feel. **  
  
**My message has failed.  That I might be lost is of no moment -- that he might be, unknowing and incredulous, is intolerable. **  
  
** _13 August_ **  
**War. **  
  
**The tawdry dramas of the world are inescapable, and should not be unexpected when it is Claire who brought us together.  That is unkind, but I have been feeling unkind, a swell of dread growing for a week, and the certainty of relief has not yet become real to me.  Nor should it, for the canker in the flower is still there.  The blossom is yet at threat, although the rosebush may be spared, and never has there been any flower pressed between my pages half so dear as this. **  
  
**To-night we all went up to Diodati for the last time, together, Percy in a great state of agitation, Claire swollen from weeping.  John was thunderous when we arrived, but dear Albé was calm, and he drew us into his calm, while Percy spoke of what they had hidden from me. **  
  
**Claire is with child.  We are certain it is Albé’s babe, and he wishes to do right by the infant but not by its mother.  It put me in an ill state to do what we had agreed must be done, and I was sorely tempted to in turn tell the company what else had been hidden -- two enmeshed conspiracies, and neither satisfied with the complex prize in its clutches.  In great distraction, I kept my wit enough to compose myself, and wonder coldly that these two architects would need my seal on their proceedings now.  They had gotten along well enough without me, it seemed. **  
  
**Poor John took that for triumph of a kind, though it was not meant thus, but for Claire I permitted myself to be persuaded to stay, delaying the necessary. **  
  
**Albé, at least, accomplished the first half of the severance himself, making it clear that any further involvement with Claire would rely upon us as intermediaries, or be for the child’s sake alone.  It is not his first child, and I know he must understand the depths of feeling here more than he shows, but he has ever been one to disregard turbulent waters. **  
  
**As like echoes like, as Sir Isaac Newton spoke of opposing reactions, so to are the patterns of communication Percy and I had sought.  There was one anchor that could not be dreamed of unrooting in Percy (not only from myself), whose extraction might yet aid our friend. **  
  
**Afterward, I spoke to Albé -- to Byron, with John listening on, pallid and silent, not just a witness but a participant, certain these words were meant for his ears as well.  I would publish my story, but we would not be in this venture together.  I had come to my decision before what I learned of tonight -- the timing was misfortune, but it made it easier.  Yes.  I was still his friend.  Yes.  I thought less of him for tonight, but I still thought of him, and dearly.  But in two weeks’ time we should leave, and it was best for all that while many more letters and conversations might lie between us, there was one word which would play no part in any of the myriads to be spoken. **  
  
**Love. **  
  
** _18 August_ **  
**Monk is a diverting enough fellow, and his presence has reinvigorated arguments dropped in months previous, for which I must either thank him or strike him -- I have yet to decide which -- although Pollydolly may exceed my own initiative should I choose the second.  The fellow is in bad sorts, believing himself thrown over, which only shows that he has no more perception of others than of himself.  I will not enlighten him. **  
  
**It seems I will not enlighten anyone, in fact.  Shiloh and I labor together upon Monk, elucidating on the terrible nature of his enterprise of human bondage, but as sharp and learned as his mind is, some simple things it will not grasp. **  
  
**Shiloh himself, of course, is no different.  We conversed for hours tonight on the subject of ghosts, and he would not be seen that we spoke of him.  Monk and I said, clearly and repeatedly -- while Mary noted our words in a memorandum book, and our jilted suitors took their leave-- that clearly if one believes in spirits -- Shelley was incredulous that we did not, Lord Byron and Monk Lewis, paragons of such picturesque tales -- one must also accept the provenance and providence of that arch-spirit after which we are all patterned.  Shiloh insists upon ghosts, denies God -- and for all his prophetic sight, his glimpses into the hearts of others and the sentimental sculpting of Nature -- he was blind, blind completely, to all hints that we were speaking of him. ****  
  
If he insists upon such blindness, like Polidori, he is welcome to it.  I am sure I would never tolerate my own eyes to be fettered so.

**Author's Note:**

> This story is as historically accurate as I could make it. Interestingly, while Byron, Clairmont, Polidori, and the Shelleys all kept journals and wrote frequent letters, there are several conspicuous gaps in the record. Wherever possible, this story remained true to the existing record and set its action in these lacunae. My sources were as follows:
> 
> Shelley and Byron: The Snake and the Eagle Wreathed in Fight. Charles E. Robinson.
> 
> Byron and Shelley: The History of a Friendship. John Buxton
> 
> Shelley. Newman Ivey White
> 
> Percy Bysse Shelley: Youth’s Unextinguished Fire, 1792-1816. James Bieri
> 
> Claire Clairmont and the Shelleys. Gittings and Manton
> 
> Byron: Life and Legend. Fiona Macarthy
> 
> Death and the Maidens: Fanny Wollstonecraft and the Shelley Circle. Janet Todd
> 
> Byron’s Letters and Journals, Volume V 1816-1817. Edited by Leslie Marchand
> 
> Mary Shelley’s Journal, Edited by Frederick Jones
> 
> Letters of Percy Bysse Shelley, Vol 1: Shelley in England. Edited by Frederick Jones.
> 
> The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori : 1816 : relating to Byron, Shelley, etc. Edited by William Michael Rossetti.


End file.
